Demystyfing H2020 Audits

The Research Operations Office is organising a half-day event on Horizon 2020 audits targeted at those involved in Horizon 2020 project finance and reporting, either as an administrator, accounts clerk or PI. The session will be led by ROO and LEES Chartered Certified Accountants, the independent auditing firm that has been appointed by the University as the auditor for our EC grants.

The session will include

guidance through the rules from the Horizon 2020 Model Grant Agreement

ERC Synergy Grants Re-launched

The ERC Synergy Grant scheme which was piloted in 2012 and 2013, will be re-launched in the ERC Work Programme 2018. It is expected that the call will be published on 19 July 2017 with a deadline of 14 November 2017. The perspective is to fund 25 to 30 projects in 2018, with a maximum of €10 million per grant for up to 6 years. The aim of Synergy Grants is to address ambitious research questions that can only be answered by the coordinated work of a small group of two to four Principal Investigators and their teams, bringing together their complementary skills, knowledge and resources in unprecedented ways.

The Research Office will be organising a workshop on the ERC Synergy Grant programme during July – details will be circulated once confirmed.

A new online Grants Management System from the Royal Society

The Royal Society has developed a new online Grants Management System to replace e-GAP. The new system is called Flexi-Grant and will run in parallel with e-GAP for the next 18 months until all awards have been migrated across to the new system.

Each month, new schemes will be added to Flexi-Grant with the first being “International Exchanges” where applicants will need to use the new system to submit their proposals.

There is also going to be a change to the application submission process. The deadline for submitting an application and the completion of support statements from the Head of Department and Nominated Referees will now fall on the same date. This means that the Research Operations Office will not be able to approve an application until the support statements have been provided. Applicants should bear this in mind when coordinating completion of their application prior to submission to ROO.